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THE 



INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 



AN EFFECTIVE ALLY 



OF 



REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 



LEWIS JEROME JOHNSON 

Professor of Civil Engineering 
Harvard University 



SIXTH EDITION. 



Based upon an article in the New England Magazine, June, 1909, and the 
Chicago Public, of July 30, 1909, and published in this form by the, 

MASSACHUSETTS DIRECT LEGISLATION LEAGUE 

J. R. Garret, Secretary 79 Milk St., Boston 

APRIL, 1911 



PRICE. FIVE CENTS, POSTPAID. SPECIAL PRICE IN QUANTITIES 



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NOTE TO THE FOURTH EDITION 

The most important additions to the Fourth Edition 
are 

(1) A brief description of the Oklahoma method of 
informing voters on the merits of questions submitted to 
them ; 

(2) New evidence from S'witzerland that her ex- 
cellent government is to be attributed to her perfected 
representative system. 

There has also been some rearrangement and a 
general revision. 

NOTE TO THE FIFTH EDITION 

In the Appendix of the Fifth Edition is printed the 
text of the Amendment of the Constitution of Massachu- 
setts, authorizing the Initiative and Referendum, proposea 
in 1911 by the Massachusetts Direct Legislation League. | 



Cd/i-^s// 



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THE 

INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

AN EFFECTIVE ALLY 

OF 

REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT 




UR fathers founded this government in order 
to secure for the people — all the people — the 
blessings of Ufe, liberty and happiness. They 
devised institutions and machinery to that end. 
To-day, after the lapse of a century and a quarter, 
combinations of power have grown up under these insti- 
tutions in the face of which, for multitudes of our popu- 
lation, life is precarious, liberty practically despaired of, 
and happiness, except of a kind enjoyed by the Roman 
proletariat or the plantation slave, unknown. We know 
that no one would be more impatient of such con- 
ditions than our revolutionary forefathers, and no one 
more resolute in seeking a remedy. Honor to their 
memory requires us to scrutinize their work, and to modern- 
ize it if necessary, just as they modernized their inherited 
institutions. 

Ideals of the Fathers Not At Fault. 

Accordingly we turn first to the spirit and purposes 
underlying our institutions. We find nothing to criticize, 
even after all this time. We can suggest no improvements, 
in this quarter. Even now we are inspired with a new 



4 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

enthusiasm by the ideals expressed by our fathers in founding 
this Republic, the ideals so impressively reaffirmed by 
Lincoln at Gettysburg. 

Scrutiny of their Governmental Machinery. 

We turn next to the details of their governmental 
machinery. Little is left of their industrial methods and 
institutions, and perhaps their political devices too are out 
of date. If they are, possibly it is not too late to supple- 
ment them or replace them with better. 

The legislative machinery underlies all else. We ob- 
serve that our law-making is entrusted to representative 
bodies. The make-up of these bodies is, nominally at least, 
under public control, but the output (except amendments 
to state constitutions) is not even nominally under public 
control, except as such control may be exerted through 
pressure upon individual representatives. When we consider 
the extent to which such pressure is exerted to-day by the 
greedy and highly organized few, rather than by the merely 
normally interested and unorganized many, a legislative 
system which may have been safe once comes to look 
decidedly defective. 

A Fundamental Defect. 

Further reflection convinces us that this lack of ade- 
quate popular control of results is not only a defect but 
is the fundamental defect in our legislative mechanism. 
Its correction is therefore essential, and is logically the 
first step in the modernization of our political machinery. 
This done, improved legislation is assured as fast as the 
majority can agree upon it. This done, all unnecessary and 
undesirable obstacles to progress will have been minimized. 
Until this is done, we have little reason to hope for per- 
manently better conditions, except at an utterly unrea- 
sonable cost in effort and delay. The importance of concen- 
trating attention upon this issue is manifest. 



JUN29 1S11 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 5 

What Can Be Done. 

The next question is, How shall the public get ade- 
quate control of results? 

The ansAver is, We must assert our natural right to 
revise the work of our representatives. We must do this 
revising ourselves. There is no one else to do it. To do 
it we must supplement the existing legislative machinery 
with a workable, orderly, and properly guarded contrivance 
to enable us to enact laws, to veto them, to amend them 
or to repeal them by direct popular vote over the head of 
legislatures and city councils, in the instances when these 
bodies fail to meet the public will. In other words, we must 
considerably extend the practice of direct legislation by the 
people, already familiar to us in the New England town- 
meeting, and in the popular ratification of amendments to 
state constitutions. 

Fortunately the way to do this has been devised and 
tested and has met expectations on a city-wide and state- 
wide scale. It involves two devices developed in the last 
few decades, the Initiative and the Referendum, now 
included under the single term Dii-ect Legislation. 

Initiative and Referendum. 

The Initiative enables the people to enact desirable 
measures by direct popular vote, when such measures have 
been or are likely to be ignored, pigeonholed, amended 
out of shape, or defeated by the legislature. Measures 
passed in this way may be entirely new laws, or they may, 
of course, amend or repeal existing laws. 

The Referendum enables the people, by direct popular 
vote, to veto recent enactments of their representatives. 

The Initiative corrects sins of omission. 

The Referendum corrects sins of commission. 

The Initiative is set in operation by volunteer groups 
of citizens, — civic, labor, or mercantile organizations, — 



6 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

who draw up laws which they think good for themselves, 
or the public, or perhaps both. If thej^ can get a certain 
moderate percentage* of the voters of the city or State to 
sign the requisite petition the measure goes to the council 
or legislature, and if this body refuses to adopt it within 
a specified time without amendment, the measure must 
be transmitted unchanged to the people for their decision. 
If the legislative body thinks it can produce a better en- 
actment to the same effect, it maj^ draw it up and send it 
to the people, with the other, as a competing measure. The 
voters then choose between them, or reject both. In some 
jurisdictions, notably Oregon, initiative measures go directly 
to the people without previous submission to the legislature. 

The Referendum, likewise upon petition,* brings newly 
passed legislation to the popular tribunal for veto or con- 
firmation. 

The need of interference with the work of the repre- 
sentatives is greatly reduced by the mere existence of the 
system, and the number of laws actually coming to popular 
vote is a small fraction of the whole. 

The Recall and Its Relation to Direct Legislation. 

Direct Legislation is likely to result, before being long 
in operation, in the establishment of the Recall, which is 
the properly guarded power of removal of unsatisfactory 
officeholders before the expiration of their terms. Thus 
the people gain the power of removal, the logical sup- 
plement to their already existing power of election. 

The Recall, though obviously a device indispensable 
for popular control, and usually, in city charters, established 
simultaneously with Direct Legislation, will not be dis- 

* The number of signatures required in these petitions ranges, in 
different states, from five to eight per cent of tlie voters for initiative 
petitions for ordinary laws ; from eight to fifteen per cent for initia- 
tive petitions for constitutional amendments; and from five to ten per 
cent for referendum petitions. The usual percentages are eight for 
initiative, and five for referendum petitions. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 7 

cussed further here. It should be looked upon as one of 
the numerous desirable but subordinate measures, like 
Preferential Voting, Direct Nominations and the Short 
Ballot, which may safely be left to be gained by subsequent 
enactment in the larger jurisdictions like our states. This 
is strikingly true in Massachusetts where the Recall has 
been authorized in the Constitution since its adoption 
in 1780, as will be seen from Art. VIII of that Con- 
stitution quoted below, and could, probably, unlike the 
Initiative and Referendum, be made operative without con- 
stft^'.tional amendment. 

Furnishing Information to Voters. 

The Initiative and Referendum, as now advocated, 
carry with them, of course, adequate and systematic means, 
independent of the newspapers, of furnishing each voter 
the full text of the measures to be voted on; the condensed 
form in which they will be printed on the ballot; state- 
ment of the reasons for and against each measure; and the 
names of those behind each proposition. 

In Oregon, the Secretary of State edits this informa- 
tion and mails it in pamphlet form to each voter in the 
State fifty-five days before election. At least eight weeks 
have elapsed by that time since the circulation and filing 
of the petitions. This is found to afford ample time for 
deliberation and discussion, and the pamphlet provides an 
adequate basis for decisions. Those who wish to insert 
arguments in this pamphlet pay the cost of paper and 
printing — some eighty dollars per page — and the State bears 
the rest of the cost of the pamphlet and its distribution. 
In initiative cases, supporting arguments are accepted from 
none but duly accredited representatives of the friends of the 
measure; any one who will pay the cost, however, may 
insert arguments against such a measure. In referendum 
cases arguments upon either side may be inserted by any 



8 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

one willing to pay the cost. In the election of June, 1908 
when nineteen measures were acted upon by the elector- 
ate, the State Pamphlet was a document of one hundred 
and twenty-five octavo pages. 

Oregon voters protect themselves still further from 
false or misleading campaign literature by a provision of 
their admirable Corrupt Practices Act — a comprehensive 
measure, based on English practice, which came from the 
people by the Initiative— which prescribes a heavy penalty 
for circulating political literature without the names of its 
authors and publishers. 

In Oklahoma, there is a State Pamphlet for informing 
voters as in Oregon, but with some interesting differences 
in detail. In Oklahoma, as is proposed in Massachusetts, 
initiative measures go first to the legislature. Hence all 
popular voting is upon measures which have had recent 
legislative action. A joint committee of House and Senate 
is therefore naturally called upon to prepare the argu- 
ments supporting the legislature's position. The oppos- 
ing argument is drawm up by a committee representing 
the petitioners. 

The argument for each side of each measure is restricted 
by the Oklahoma law to two thousand words, one-fourth 
of which may be in answer to opponents' arguments. The 
direct argument on each side is prepared and submitted 
to the Secretary of State, who transmits it to the opposing 
side to serve as the basis for the rebuttal just mentioned 
and thus complete the argument. These arguments on 
all the questions are then assembled in the State Pamphlet 
and distributed to all the voters of the state a suitable 
number of weeks before the election. The cost of printing 
and distribution is borne by the public treasury. 

The Oklahoma plan has some striking merits. It 
requires the Legislature to state the reason for the action 
which it has taken. Doubtless this reason is often good 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 9 

and sufficient, but perhaps more certainly so when the 
lawmakers know in advance that they may have to de- 
fend their position. The legislature's views on the measure 
should be of great value to the voters. 

More important still, it ensures the presentation of a 
negative argument. Experience in Oregon has already 
shown that a negative argument is not always forthcoming 
when left to be supplied by volunteers. A campaign of 
silence is sometimes wisely preferred by interests at whom 
an initiative measure is aimed, to the revelation of weakness 
which would result from a formal attempt at defence. 
They well know that voters are likely, from sheer force of 
habit, thoughtlessly to concede more in the defence of a 
long established wrong than its beneficiaries would dare 
claim for it. The Oklahoma plan of informing voters requires 
each side to show its hand. Bluffing is eliminated. Privilege 
has to come out in the open and state such case as it has. 
Silent contempt is not permitted to do duty as argument. 

Both the Oregon and the Oklahoma systems of dis- 
seminating information do much to forestall the mislead- 
ing of voters through the newspapers. Some expense is 
involved, but this point is not apt to be pressed except 
by those opposed to the whole system on other grounds. 
The body of voters well understand that one bad law or 
one carelessly granted franchise may cost the public in 
actual dollars and cents many times the cost of the State 
Pa^mphlet. 

Hopeful Outlook for Representative Government. 

Supplemented by the Initiative and Referendum, to 
serve as a permanent background, and for application 
when called for, the representative system will gradually 
but surely enter upon a period of honor and usefulness 
hitherto never surpassed and probably never equaled. 
Relieved of the unnatural excess of power under which they 



10 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

now stagger and sometimes fall, legislative bodies will 
cease to be attractive objects for bribery and secret influence. 
Log-rolling will greatly diminish. The power of bosses 
and rings will be undermined. Seats in the legislatures 
will then begin to be unattractive to grafters. At the same 
time they will become more attractive to high-minded, 
public-spirited citizens. There will be a fairer chance 
that a man clean when elected will stay clean. It will 
make It safe to reduce the size of legislatures and to dimin- 
ish greatly the number of elective officers. The party 
machines and bosses once permanently out of control, 
we may reach the point of competing successfully with 
the corporations in attracting the best young talent to 
the public service. 

With Direct Legislation in vogue, it is not necessary to 
retire a faithful legislator to express disapproval of some 
of his measures. The electorate, while returning the man 
to office, can overrule the measures with no more reflection 
on his honor or usefulness than is involved in the overruling 
of a lower court by a higher. Honest and able representatives 
are hence likely to be repeatedly re-elected. Long tenure is 
as valuable to public as to private business. Where the 
people have been in control long enough for this result to 
show as in Switzerland and in the New England towns, 
they are seen to act upon this principle. In Switzerland 
it is rare that a new member appears in a legislative body 
"except to fill a vacancy due to death or voluntary retirement. 
In New England towns it is common for faithful officials 
to be retained in office practically for life, their annual 
re-elections being frequently uncontested. 

With a seat in the legislature thus robbed of its charms 
for all but the public-spirited, and with re-election practically 
assured to men of proved merit, real legislative experts in 
good number may gradually be developed. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 11 

Representative Government Yet to Be Given a Fair Trial. 

In view of such untested possibilities, it is beside the 
mark to wonder whether representative government is a 
failure. We begin to realize that it has not yet been fairly 
tried, at least not in recent years. We realize that our 
legislators have been working under almost intolerable 
conditions. They have been continually exposed to temp- 
tations that no ordinary man ought to be asked to face, 
and it is a tribute to human nature that so many of our 
legislators have stayed straight. Under Direct Legisla- 
tion legislators will have all the power that is ever accorded 
to representatives and agents in business, which is all that 
is wholesome or attractive to worthy citizens of a democratic 
republic. That final enacting power is far from essential 
to the dignity of a legislative body is shown by the uni- 
versal respect in which our American constitutional con- 
ventions have always been held. 

Improved Status of the Voter. 

While a sufficiency of power is thus left with the rep- 
resentatives, a salutary increase of responsibility is thrown 
upon the voter. It brings him, to some purpose, into 
closer touch with great affairs. It enables him to vote 
for measures apart from men, and for men apart from 
measures. He can begin to assume the statute of a man, 
to become a sovereign in fact as well as in fancy. It will en- 
able hAni to settle something at an election besides the party 
label of officeholders, which in turn settles little except 
which faction shall dispense the spoils of office. For we 
know only too well that platforms are "merely to get in 
on, not to ride on." Even if they were expected to be 
observed, platforms are composites which rarely represent, 
except in the roughest way, the views of any one thoughtful 
voter. 



12 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

Simplicity of the Voter's Task. 

The new task proposed for the voter, though inspiring, 
is relatively simple. It differs widely from legislation in 
the ordinary sense. 

The originating and drafting of bills can manifestly 
never fall as a burden on the mass of the voters. For 
this service the community can always command ability 
as wise, disinterested and as practised in legislation as any 
who now do such work. The average voter's part in the 
work is deliberation, discussion and the registry of his 
decision. This is no new task for him; the only novelty 
is in having a chance to do it intelligently, and to see his 
decision go into effect. 

The voter, going into the booth, has known for months 
just what is coming up and in just what form it is coming 
up. There is no thought of possible amendment. With 
regard to each measure he has simply to approve or reject. 
He has had plenty of time to make up his mind. If a measure 
is objectionable in purpose or form, or is lacking in clearness, 
he will of course reject it and await — or cause — its reappear- 
ance in a more acceptable form at a subsequent election. 

The voter is thus more like a juror than like a legislator. 
His capacity for intelligent, discriminating work at a single 
election is therefore large — much larger, as experience 
shows, than at first thought might seem possible. 

In 1909, for example, the voters of Portland, Oregon, 
in a city election, besides voting for mayor and other officers, 
voted discriminatingly and with sustained interest on 
thirty-five measures, thirteen of wliich they passed. The 
average vote on each of the thirty-five measures was 
slightly over eighty-one per cent of the total vote for 
mayor, with a range from seventy-five per cent to ninety 
per cent. The majorities, both yes and no, Were sometimes 
heavy, sometimes light. There is every evidence that the 
voting in each case reflected the calm judgment of the voters. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 13 

In Denver, in the election of May, 1910,. the voters, 
besides electing city officers, dealt discriminatingly with 
a list of twenty-one measures, some of them trickily worded. 
Moreover, in this case, they had to face an enormous cor- 
ruption fund and all that the combined party machines, 
and selfish interests could do to mislead. The result was a 
triumph for the people at every significant point. 

The people's capacity for Direct Legislation is not likely 
to be subjected to severer fcests than it has already stood with 
signal success. 

New Talent Freely Enlisted for Public Service. 

Through Direct Legislation, the State will offer an 
attractive field of usefulness for such of her citizens as do not 
care to give up their Avhole time to public life. Public- 
spirited citizens, without dislocation of business or profession, 
may and will devote a much larger share of their time than 
now to the consideration of public questions. If they 
conceive of a desirable step in legislation, they will not have 
to contrive to get into office and to stay there long enough 
to accompUsh their ends. They have a dignified and honor- 
able method of presenting to the final authority, for adoption 
or rejection, the best fruits of their labors, free from the 
risk of mutilation or distortion by ill-informed, overworked, 
or corrupt legislatures. Tliis alone would be a powerful 
means of bringing spontaneously to the public service, 
and at no expense, a large amount of talent of the best 
possible sort for which there is now little encouragement 
in public life. This is the talent on which we probably 
must depend for the most serious law making, and which we 
have had httle chance to utilize. The legislature will thus 
be facing a reasonable and wholesome competition and the 
pubHc cannot fail to profit thereby. 



14 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

Direct Legislation a Safeguard against Mob Rule. 

Sometimes officeholders or party machine men profess 
a great fear that Direct Legislation will result in "mob 
rule." This must be taken to mean that they fear, proba- 
bly with reason, that the people, after weeks of deliberation 
and with adequate information, would not support their 
pet schemes. Prospective abundance of popular majorities 
in their favor would neither excite their alarm nor be 
called by them ''mob rule." No ; mob-action finds a more 
promising field in nominating conventions, and even town 
meetings than in the long process of gathering signatures, 
weeks of discussion and deliberation, and the quiet vote on 
an Australian ballot in isolated, individual booths. 

Direct Legislation is not only a safeguard again^ ^ mob 
rule, but against the only thing likely with us to lead to 
violent revolution, namely, machine rule for the benefit of the 
privileged few. Majority rule precludes both mob rule 
and machine rule, for majority rule -brings into play the 
great patient mass of honest, hardworking citizens, ordi- 
narily silent and little felt. They abhor alike the violent 
methods of the mob and the intriguing of "politics." No 
less do they shrink from making themselves individually 
conspicuous in hopelessly protesting against powerful 
wrongs which they can, though they ought not to, endure. 
They are likely to suffer in silence until driven to extremes, 
rather than seek relief through the distasteful and inadequate 
means now at their disposal. 

To provide the people with orderly and regular means 
of expressing themselves on equal terms with all their 
neighbors, with the certainty that their will thus expressed 
will take effect, is the logical way to ensure the healthy and 
natural progress which in the long run is the only pre- 
ventive of violent upheaval. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 15 

Deeper Value of Direct Legislation. 

An additional advantage in Direct Legislation is the 
education which it affords the average voter. One cannot 
help believing that the consequent toning up of the public 
standard of thought and morals would be in the long run 
the most important feature of the system. Direct Legis- 
lation tends thus automatically to produce a highly trained 
and self-respecting electorate, and to lay the deepest and 
most promising foundation for permanent good government. 

Direct Legislation is the only orderly means known 
for accurately and unmistakably expressing the public will as 
to legislation, and for making it prevail. It gives at last 
a fair approach to a proper and worthy means of register- 
ing public sentiment, well defined by some one as "the 
deliberate and reasoned judgment" of the people. It is 
as effective a balance wheel against mere popular clamor 
as it is a safeguard against the silent scheming of the crafty 
few. Direct Legislation thus opens for the first time a fair 
prospect for the early realization of the cherished American 
ideal — a government by as well as of and for the people. 

Development of Direct Legislation. 

The Direct Legislation idea is no novelty among free 
peoples. It may be seen in the institutions of the Plymouth 
Colony. It appears in our time-honored New England 
town meeting and the even more ancient Swiss Landesge- 
meinde, and German folk-moot, all of them perfect exem- 
plifications of the Direct Legislation principle on a small 
scale. It appears in our popular ratification of state consti- 
tutions and their amendments, usually insisted upon from 
the first, in spite of the pitifully inadequate facilities of our 
early days. 

More recently, we note the steady extension of Direct 
Legislation through the Initiative and Referendum from 
canton to canton in Switzerland, its application to Swiss 



16 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

federal legislation — the Referendum in 1874 and the Initia- 
tive for constitutional amendments in 1891 — and its adoption 
in the last decade by city after city and State after State 
in this country. Direct Legislation (usually accompanied 
from the start by the Recall) is an essential feature of nearly 
all modern city charters, and those without it will doubtless 
have to add it sooner or later to get satisfactory results. 
Notable among the Direct Legislation cities stand Los 
Angeles, Des Moines, our own Haverhill and Gloucester, 
and the newest recruits, Berkeley, Cal, Colorado Springs, 
Grand Junction, Col., and Burlington, la. Similar examples 
among the States are South Dakota since 1898, Oregon since 
1902, Montana since 1906, Oklahoma since 1907, Maine and 
Missouri since 1908, and Arkansas and Colorado in 1910. 

How it Works in Switzerland. 

For examples of the effect of Direct Legislation, we 
naturally turn first to Switzerland, where it has been in 
operation on what may be called a large scale for fifty to 
eighty years. With the aid of Direct Legislation as a result 
of its moral influence as well as by its direct application, 
Switzerland has, wherever she has applied it, rid herself 
of the misrule and exploitation which were previously 
rampant, as they had been for centuries, in all but the 
minute but ultra-democratic cantons.* Thanks to sound 
democratic idealism supported by suitable machinery for 
its expression she has now come to be an admirably gov- 
erned country. 

Mr. James Bryce, the present English ambassador 
to the United States, declared to a Cambridge audience 
in 1904 that Switzerland is the most successful democracy 
that the world has ever seen. 

* It is to these little cantons, including less than ten per cent, of 
the area, and less than seven per cent of the population of the present 
whole country, that Switzerland owes her otherwise quite undeserved 
reputation for century-old free political institutions. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 17 

Further expert testimony to what is generally known 
and admitted by the well-informed and disinterested is hardly 
needed, but the New International Encyclopedia in its 
article on Switzerland, expresses it so naively that it may 
be worth citing. After a lengthy account of the civil wars 
and political turmoil in the early part of the nineteenth 
century, it disposes of the rest of the century with the single 
remark that "the history of Switzerland for the past quarter 
of a century has been very uneventful, though marked 
by a steady material, intellectual and political growth." 

All this does not mean that Switzerland is an unalloyed 
paradise. Some of the great human problems seem as 
far from solution in Switzerland as elsewhere. It does 
mean that the government promptly reflects public senti- 
ment, and at the same time is free from violent fluctua- 
tions of policy. It means that the government is admin- 
istered efficiently, and in the interest of the public good. 
It means that Switzerland, with a form of government 
modelled largely upon our own, by a modification which 
might have been suggested by our Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, has secured good government in a democratic 
republic. 

Old-Fashioned Methods Survive in One Canton. 

The excellent results in Switzerland are to be seen 
not only in her federal affairs but also in the affairs of an 
overwhelming majority of her cantons. We must not, 
however, overlook Canton Fribourg, the only one of the 
twenty-two Swiss cantons as yet unable to equip herself 
with the Initiative and Referendum. She has still the un- 
perfected or "pure" representative system characteristic 
of our American states and cities and of the old times 
in the rest of Switzerland. This brings with it, there as 
here, boss-rule and all that boss-rule implies. The legis- 
lative body is nominated by the boss, elected by the people 



18 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

and managed by the boss. Prominent citizens are skillfully 
kept in line by a share in the plunder for themselves, or for 
their churches or philanthropies, or by fear of loss of favor 
with the two chief banks, both creatures of the boss. There 
is bribery, extravagance, subordination of the general in- 
terest to private business, the heaviest per capita cantonal 
debt in Switzerland, and the public apathy which naturally 
follows wide-spread hopelessness. The agitation for the 
Initiative and Referendum is still kept up by Fribourg 
patriots as their only hope, but all orderly means of success 
are in the control of the boss who, of course, fights them 
and will fight them for his political life.* 

Initiative and Referendum Most Developed in Important 

Centers. 

As a contrast to Fribourg, it should be observed that 
the chief cantons of Switzerland, Berne and Zurich, the 
former a farming, the latter a manufacturing canton, both 
far in the lead of their neighbors in population and im- 
portance, are among the cantons having the Initiative 
and Referendum in their most radical and readily work- 
able form. Zurich is clearly the most advanced of the 
cantons in this respect, and Berne is surpassed, and at that 
only slightly, by few besides Zurich. 

In short, where the Initiative and Referendum are 
most readily set in motion, there have developed clean 
government and leadership in civic and industrial growth. 
In the only canton where there is neither the Initiative 
and Referendum nor pure democracy, there is misrule and 
political apathy of the familiar American type. 



* This bit of evidence from Fribourg is drawn from an article en- 
titled "The Only Political Boss in Switzerland" by George Judson 
King, Secretary of the Ohio Direct Legislation League, m the Twen- 
tieth Century Magazine for July, 1910. The article is based on recent 
personal observations in Canton Fribourg. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 19 

Switzerland an Adequate Precedent for American States 
and Cities. 

The Swiss success under perfected representative gov- 
ernment may reasonably be expected to be repeated in this 
country, for the strength of the system Hes in giving com- 
mon human nature a fair chance to do itself justice. 
Human nature in Switzerland is very much like that else- 
where. That it is like that in this country is to be seen 
from the fact that representative government without 
direct popular control results in demoralization and bad 
government there just as it does here, and in just the same 
waj^ there as it does here. 

It is sometimes suggested, however, that little Switzer- 
land, good as her results are conceded to be, is not an ade- 
quate precedent for an immense nation like the United 
States. But a small nation may exemplif}^ a principle 
essential to the success of a large nation. An ocean liner 
must obey the laws of steam-engineering as well as a tug- 
boat. A sound fundamental principle holds regardless of the 
scale of the enterprise. That a self-governing people must 
have effective control over the laws under which they hve 
would seem to be a principle of this kind. Details may 
require adjustment, but the principle will hold. But all that 
aside, the important comparison is not so much with our 
nation as with our cities and states. Switzerland, unhomo- 
geneous in population, pre-eminently a manufacturing nation, 
larger than Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and -Connecticut 
combined, with a population slightly larger than that of 
Massachusetts is plainly an excellent precedent for the 
adoption of Direct Legislation by individual American cities 
and States. 

Moreover there may never be need for a federal Ini- 
tiative and Referendum system for this country. With 
the rings once permanently ousted from our cities and 
states, the federal government should automatically run 



20 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

clear. For the rings that do the plundering at Washington 
could manifestly not long survive without their intrench- 
ments in the cities and states. At any rate, it is obviously 
correct tactics now to go right ahead for the Initiative 
and Referendum in states and cities. Our only disappoint- 
ments with it, judging by experience elsewhere, are likely 
to arise from excessive restrictions which the legislatures 
may impose upon it. 

New England States Especially Fitted for Direct Legislation. 

New England, the home of the town meeting, enjoying 
the inspiration of the Massachusetts and other New England 
States Constitutions, with Maine already in the Direct 
Legislation ranks, may be expected to take especially 
kindly to this new and long step toward the realization 
of her ancient ideals. 

The real questions for us in New England to answer 
are: 

1. Are we noiv as fit for this forward step as the Swiss 
were when they were putting the system in operation thirty 
to fiftr years ago? 

2. Is not even a compHcated law, properly explained and 
vouched for, as suitable a thing for a popular vote as a choice 
between complicated candidates whose actions no one can 
foresee? 

3. Is not an occasional vote on an ordinary law a natural 
and reasonable addition to our time-honored system of 
popular votes on State constitutions and their amendments? 

4. Is it not worth while to disentangle measures from 
men and submit to popular vote definite and distinct propo- 
sitions instead of mixtures of candidates, parties and plat- 
forms ? 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 21 

Encouragement from Oregon. 

To ask these questions in America is to answer them 
in the affirmative. All parts of the country are coming 
to see the point. Oregon, nearly half as large again as all 
New England combined, is setting us a most encouraging 
example. 

Seven years ago she adopted Direct Legislation. She was 
then deep in political corruption. Thanks to the Initiative, 
and measures secured with it which legislatures had refused 
to pass, she has made great progress toward better govern- 
ment and the house-cleaning is going right on.* 

The outcries of the local plunderers show that they feel 
their power slipping away. Their intrigues for the 
destruction of the Initiative and Referendum show that 
they know the cause. 

What the Fathers were Trying to Do. 

We shall be interested to see how Direct Legislation fits 
in with the ideas of our wonderfully far-sighted and successful 
constitution framers. It will be worth while to quote a 
few passages from the Constitution of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts — the oldest of their works — the spirit of 
which is no stranger in other parts of the country. Articles 
V, VII, and VIII of that honored document will give the 
ideas of the fathers on the relation of the people to their 
representatives : 

Article V. All power residing originally in the people, and being 
derived from tnem, the several magistrates and officers of government, 
vested with authority, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, are 
their substitutes and agents, and are at all times accountable to them. 

* See the speech of Senator Bourne of Oregon in the U. S. Senate, 
May 5, 1910 (obtainable from the Massachusetts Direct Legisla- 
tion League), for an extended description of this remarkable work. 
Senator Bourne, a Republican, and by birth a Massachusetts man, 
and his colleague, Senator Chamberlain, a Democrat, born in Mis- 
sissippi, are alike active advocates of the Initiative and Referendum, 
after observing its eight years of operation in their home state. 



22 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

Art. VII. Government is instituted for the common good; for the 
protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not 
for the profit, tonor, or private interest of any one man, family, or 
class of men: Therefore the people have an incontestable, unalienable, 
and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter 
or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, 
and happiness require it. 

Art. VIII. In order to prevent those who are vested with authority 
from becoming oppressors, the people have a right, at such periods 
and in such manner as they shall establish by their frame of govern- 
ment, to cause their public officers to return to private life; and to 
fill up vacant places by certain and regular elections and appointments. 



Lack of Steam and Electricity the Obstacle to Direct Legis- 
lation at the Outset. 

On reading these sturdy New England doctrines one 
must conclude that the only reason why the fathers did 
not then and there establish Direct Legislation for the 
State and for cities as they might develop, was that it 
was at that time physically impossible. Mechanical in- 
vention had not advanced far enough to permit it even if 
they had conceived the idea. We must not forget that 
their facilities for disseminating information and gathering 
returns were little superior to those of Julius Caesar. They 
knew no more of railways than Caesar did, such highways 
as they had were not so good as Caesar's. But they reso- 
lutely did all that was practicable under the mechanical 
conditions of their time. They provided an obligatory 
referendum on the adoption and amendment of the Consti- 
tution of the Commonwealth, even though it might and did 
take weeks to put the matter to vote and get the returns. 
And it is clear that nothing was farther from their minds 
than that the will of representatives should prevail over 
the will of the people, some modern officeholders to the 
contrarv notwithstandine. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 23 

Now that Direct Legislation, as a working institution 
on a large scale, has become a possibility through the intro- 
duction of the modern means of spreading news and ideas 
by the telegraph, high-speed printing press, and the railway, 
we can proceed from the point where the fathers were 
forced to stop and can vindicate more clearly than ever the 
soundness of their noble idealism. 



An Attractive Outlook. 

In closing it may be said that the Initiative and Referen- 
dum appeal particularly to progressive Americans in whom 
still lives the spirit of the liberty-loving men who founded 
this nation. Such citizens readily comprehend the necessity 
of controlling the important results, and of not limiting 
themselves to toying at government while privilege does 
the governing. They take great satisfaction, moreover, 
in a remedial measure so thoroughly in harmony with the 
old ideals and institutions. It involves, after all, only a bit 
of additional machinery, and depends for its success only 
upon our fitness for self-government. 

Of course Direct Legislation is only a piece of mechanism. 
It will not suffice merely to set it up. It must be made to 
work promptly and with vigor when required. This will 
take real citizens. Oregon shows that such citizens still 
exist — some of them of New England or other American 
stock, some of them born in old-world monarchies. 

The success in Switzerland; the steady progress and 
gratifying results in America; the strenuous opposition by 
favorites or managers of political machines; the misrepre- 
sentations by professional lobbyists and conspicuous office- 
holders, echoed in ready-made "editorials," all indicate 
that the Initiative and Referendum are measures justly 



24 TliE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

destined to receive an increasing amount of public attention 
and regard. 

With the Initiative and Referendum in force, we shall 
be equipped as never before to resist enemies from within; 
enemies far more dangerous to our freedom than any foreign 
foe. 

The Initiative and Referendum may well be the means 
of instituting on a permanent basis the responsible kind of 
representative government which our fathers lived and died 
to secure. 

The Initiative and Referendum may well prove to be 
the salvation of the momentous experiment led by Jefferson, 
Hancock, Franklin, the Adamses and Washington. 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 25 

APPENDIX. 

How simple an enactment would suffice to establish 
Direct Legislation in Massachusetts can perhaps best be 
shown by quoting in full the constitutional amendment 
brought before the 1911 legislature (House Bill No. 365) 
by the Massachusetts Direct Legislation League. 

ARTICLE OF AMENDMENT. 

The legislative authority of the commonwealth shall be vested in the 
general court; but the people reserve to themselves the initiative 
which is the power to propose acts, statutes, laws, resolves and amend- 
ments to the constitution, and to enact, adopt or reject the same at the 
polls independently of the general court; and the people also reserve 
to themselves the referendum, which is the power at their own option 
to approve or reject at the polls any act or resolve of the general court 
or any part or parts thereof. 

The initiative shall be set in operation by petition to the general court 
requiring for an act or resolve the signatures of legal voters to the number 
of eight per cent of the total vote cast for governor at the last pre- 
ceding election : and for an amendment to the constitution the signatures 
of legal voters to the number of fifteen per cent of said total vote. The 
full text of the measure so proposed shall be included in the petition. 

Initiative petitions shall be filed in the office of the secretary of the 
commonwealth and may be so filed either before the general court 
assembles or within three weeks thereafter. The secretary shall trans- 
mit a copy of the petition without the signatures to each branch of 
the general court within four weeks after the general court assembles. 

If a measure thus petitioned for, other than an amendment to the 
constitution, is not passed without amendment in that session, or if 
vetoed by the governor is not passed over his veto, it shall be referred 
to the people at the next state election, together with such amended 
form as the general court may recommend; but such amended form 
shall not take effect unless approved by the people at such election. 
If passed without amendment it shall still be subject to a referendum 
petition. 

If the measure thus petitioned for is an amendment to the constitution 
it shall be referred to the people at the next state election together with 
such amended form as the general cotut may recommend. 

The referendum may be ordered either by the general court, by a 
majority yea and nay vote of all the members of each house, or by 
petition requiring the signatures of legal voters to the number of five 
per cent of the total vote cast for governor at the last preceding election. 



26 THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 

Such petition shall be filed in the office of the secretary of the common- 
wealth within ninety days after the act or resolve shall have been signed 
by the governor or passed over his veto. A referendum may be ordered 
against the whole or against one or more sections or parts of any act 
or resolve. 

An act or resolve shall not take effect until the expiration of ninety 
days after it shall have been signed by the governor or passed over his 
veto, except such as shall be declared to be an emergency measure. 
Such declaration shall be made in a preamble which shall state the facts 
constituting the emergency and contain the statement that therefore 
the act or resolve is necessary for the immediate preservation of the 
public peace, health or safety. A special vote shall be taken on the 
preamble separate from the vote on the act or resolve or any part of it, 
and a two thirds yea and nay vote of all the members of each house shall 
be required for the adoption of the preamble. No grant of any fran- 
chise or renewal or extension thereof either in respect of time or the area 
of its operation shall be declared to be an emergency measure. Any 
measure or part thereof upon which a referendum has been ordered shall 
either as to the whole or such part thereof be suspended from taking 
effect imtil it becomes law on approval by the people, except that an 
emergency measm-e shall take effect as therein provided. 

Measures referred to the people of the commonwealth shall be voted 
on at the next regular state election. 

A measure submitted to the people shall become law or a part of the 
constitution if approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon, and 
shall take effect at the expiration of thirty days after the election at 
which it was approved or at such time after the expiration of said thirty 
days as may be therein provided. An emergency measm-e, or any 
section or part thereof, shall upon referendum become void at the ex- 
piration of thirty days after the election at which it shall have been 
disapproved by a majority of the votes cast thereon. 

The veto power of the governor shall not extend to measiures approved 
by the people. 

Measures approved by the people at any one election and in conflict 
in one or more of their provisions shall all take effect as to provisions 
not in conflict. In each case of conflicting provisions in such measures, 
that one of the provisions in conflict shall take effect which was con- 
tained in that one of such measures which received the greatest number 
of affirmative votes, and all others of such conflicting provisions shall 
become void. 

The enacting style in making and passing all acts, statutes, and laws 
by the general court, both those originating in either branch of the 
general court and those proposed by initiative petition, shall be — 
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General 
Court assembled and by the authority of the same." The enacting 



THE INITIATIVE AND REFERENDUM 27 

style of all acts, statutes and laws, both those in a form proposed by 
initiative petition and passed by the people and those in a form recom- 
mended by the general court and approved by the people, shall be — 
"Be it enacted by the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
and by the authority of the same" ; and of all acts, statutes, and laws 
approved upon referendum shall be — "Be it enacted by the Senate and 
House of Representatives in General Court assembled, and by the 
authority of the same and by the approval of the people upon ref- 
erendum." 

Every measure referred to the people shall be described on the 
ballots clearly and simply by the secretary of the commonwealth sub- 
ject to review by a com-t of equity. 

The secretary of the commonwealth shall print and distribute to 
each voter a sample ballot together with the full text of every measure 
to be submitted to a vote of the people, and the general court shall 
provide for public dissemination of information and arguments thereon. 

In carrying out the provisions of this amendment, which shall be 
'' self-enforcing, the secretary of the commonwealth and all other officers 
are to be guided by the general laws and by the terms of this amend- 
ment imtil further provisions shall be made therefor by legislation. 

All provisions in the existing constitution inconsistent with the pro- 
visions herein contained are hereby wholly annulled. 

This amendment follows closely the lines of the Oregon 
enactment which has been working so well since 1902. It 
differs, however, in requiring that each measure proposed 
by initiative petition shall go first to the legislature and 
be transmitted to popular vote only if the legislature refuses 
to pass it unamended, or unless a referendum be demanded 
upon it after passage by the legislature; also in requiring a 
larger number of signers for constitutional amendments 
than for other measures. 



JUN 29 1911 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



012 050 555 5 



Edwin L. SlocomI 



